that rosebud girl

yet another philly heartbreak.

it’s 13 years and counting.

the phillies will stay home for yet another postseason.

they gave it a ride and probably did better than some people might have thought after the mini fire sale, but still …

the dodgers and padres suck.

seriously, though, it’s just another in a long line of philly letdowns. any fan of a philadelphia pro team knows this refrain all too well. your team goes in the shitter, then catches fire, teases you, sucks you into believing again, and then just tears your heart out.

oh, well.

here’s to next year. at least ryan howard and chase utley are legit. some rotation help and an outfielder who’s not pat burrell might put them back in the hunt.

and of course … there’s always usc. always.

a baseball bat …

… might come in quite handy right now. you know, to take out a little frustration. a baseball bat against my wooden fence. yeah, that might do the trick.

stupid fantasy football … i had my ucla game equivalent and lost. what a bastard. my season is pretty much a wash now … well, until i win the top prize. but that’s besides the point. it’s like usc in 1995, when they went 10-2 or something like that and won the rose bowl … but those losses were to ND and fucla. so it felt kinda empty, you know?

grrrrr.

on the other hand, i got a notice from Flowers& Magazine yesterday with some sales leads. some addresses and phone numbers and such. now i gotta get on the horn and call said folks. if i ever have time.

grrrrr again.

i need a clone. but i could probably use the baseball bat more …

oh, football …

… how you break my heart.

thanks to the denver broncos, i am the first knockout in my own nfl pool. (well, okay, me and one other person. but still.)

you can’t suck in your own pool. it’s just really bad form. i knew i shouldn’t have picked the new england patriots!

damn you, tom brady.

in other pool news, a 52-yard field goal kept about six people from biting the dust in the pool as well. those lucky bastards. i wish i was one of those lucky bastards.

*sigh*

there’s always next year.

of course, if i wind up beating austria in fantasy football, it won’t be a lost weekend.

and my day had started out so well, too. lisa and i went to a jewelry-making class at one of the local bead shops. we got to play with soldering irons. mmmm …. heat. soldering is fun. smelly, but fun. and i wound up with a really nice pendant.

mmm … HDTV …

ed and i just bought a big screen tv today. hokey smokes!

i can’t even begin to tell you how stoked i am to have a really big tv … not to mention that i’ll be able to watch football in high-def.

we can’t get the stuff all set up for a couple of days (first of all, a tv stand might be helpful … not to mention a call to directv to upgrade to to HD), but booyah!

i am not worthy of jorge rayo!

if edgar resurrects the DCS rankings, jorge has to be no. 1, hands down.

check this sequence out:

• jorge comes home wasted at 1:30 a.m. on friday … gets up at 7 a.m. and decides right then and there that he’s going to drive down from tulare to L.A. for the game.
• by the way, that cat doesn’t have a ticket to the game.
• he shows up (at like, 11:30), and comes and tailgates with the crew.
• at some point, he leaves to go to smart and final across the street … and comes back with the trough … and it’s full of beer and ice. he almost had to carry that heavy sucker by himself, but some old dude was kind enough to help him. so we gave the guy three newcastles.
• jorge also had the sweetest shoes on earth … cardinal and gold custom nikes that said “trojans” and “sc” on them.
• then, about an hour before the game, jorge goes down to the coliseum to try and find a ticket … and scores two for $100! he proceeds to sell one of those tickets off for $50.

one of the biggest games of the year … and jorge winds up paying way less for tickets than i did!

i am never going to buy a ticket online again. i’m just gonna hang out with jorge. he is apparently a master of scoring tickets cheap.

i thought i was a hardcore SC fan, but that cat takes the cake. he didn’t even go to USC!

anyway, everything was fun. ed and i got to campus around 1 (and i ate a crapload of food). edgar came by from work, and he originally thought he might not be able to make it to tailgate.

we kicked it old-school and were at the engineering quad. it was real low-key and small. really nice. it was the original tailgate crew: ed, jorge, edgar, cook, jabari … we kicked it like it was 2000! i only messed up because i didn’t take the football from the car … but i’ll remember next time.

the game itself rocked (we were sitting in one of the end zones … pretty good seats, actually). that defense could keep SC undefeated.

and notre dame proved just how overrated it was by getting its ass kicked by michigan.

afterward, we went to roscoe’s. so it was a pretty good saturday.

sunday, ed, kim and i went to the lobster festival at the port … mmmm … lobster. good stuff. except the heat and i didn’t get along and i wound up sleeping something like 14 hours. we got home around 1 a.m. sunday … it wasn’t bad.

i can’t wait until the next home game!

oh, the insanity.

i think the world has officially gone mad.

i was cruising the wire at work and found a pretty good story from the college football ranks. one punter stabbed the starting punter at northern colorado. this is just a snippet.

(thank you, denver post.)

Greeley, Colo. ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù A University of Northern Colorado reserve punter on the football team stabbed the team?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s first string punter in the thigh of his punting leg, officials say.

Cozad allegedly ran up behind Mendoza in the parking lot of an apartment comlex in Evans at 9:30 p.m. on Monday and stabbed Mendoza in the right thigh, Kessler said.

damn. now, if the dudes were quarterbacks, recievers, maybe running backs or even some linemen, a stabbing might not be so farfetched. but punters? i mean, the guys are punters. it’s not like it’s the most coveted spot on the team.

you’re a punter, for crying out loud! just go out and accept that some guy can pooch a ball better than you can. who knows if the starting punter even had a scholarship? some of those dudes are just walk-ons!

what a moron.

i have to admit, though, that we were all kind of laughing incredulously about this at work. ’cause you just don’t see the slug “punterattacked” or “punterstabbed” very often on the wire.

back to work.

people are absolutely retarded …

(an ongoing rant, yes.)

today’s retard of the day comes via a story jane told me.

this weekend, jane was in washington state for a wedding and flew southwest back to sacto. a couple with their kids is sitting not far away.

as everyone settles in their seats, the dad busts out a bag of peanuts. a flight attendant proceeds to tell him, “i’m sorry, sir, but there is someone with peanut allergies on the plane. you can’t eat those peanuts on this flight.”

now, most rational human beings would probably say, “oh, okay. someone’s allergic. it’s cool. i’ll put the peanuts away.” i mean, you don’t screw with peanut allergies. some people cannot be in the presence of peanuts at all. and if you’re in this tiny confined space at 35,000 feet, i’m sure the last thing you need is a potentially fatal allergy attack. ’cause i’ve seen peanut allergy attacks. they’re not pretty.

anyway, this dumbshit’s wife starts throwing a hissy fit. over peanuts. they want to eat their damn peanuts.

finally, things get awfully heated, and they refuse to put away their peanuts. so they are informed that they’ve got to get off the plane.

at this point, the flight has been delayed about half an hour because these dumbshits can’t follow instructions and obviously don’t give a rat’s ass about anyone but themselves.

dad gathers his stuff and the kids and leaves the plane. dumbshit wife sits there in her seat for 15 minutes, then gets up and says, “i have an announcement to make. southwest is a communist outfit … because they won’t let us eat our peanuts.”

um, hello? what part of “someone has an allergy and you should respect that” did you not understand?

if i’d been on that plane, and i’d been the one with the allergy, i would have walked right up to her and said, “if i die from my allergy on this flight, i’m suing your sorry ass. you better have a lawyer and about 50 mil.”

or, i would have said, “here’s my epi-pen. when i start to hack and wheeze and can’t breathe, you can personally stick the needle in my ass, bitch.”

or i would have just punched her and her sissy husband straight up. ’cause i really have no tolerance for self-absorbed, stupid ass people. and in situations like that, all decorum — which i really don’t have much of in the first place — pretty much goes out the window.

how do these people manage to exist? dumbshits.

for her part, when the stupid lady made her communist speech, jane said in a very loud voice, “i think you need to get off the plane.” kudos to jane.

[/rant]

a moment to reflect.

today is the fifth anniversary of 9/11. take a moment to reflect on that.

for many people my age, it is our Kennedy moment. some people said it was like Challenger, but i was maybe in first grade when Challenger happened. it didn’t have the same “i’ll never forget where i was that day” resonance as 9/11 did.

i lived in tucson then. i’ll never forget watching the tv, talking to friends on IM and email and on the phone and that general feeling of helplessness. i remember going to the Red Cross on Ina Rd., going somewhere in the late afternoon just so i could get the Star’s extra.

my friend Josh and i had this conversation about 9/11 once, about how there are going to be all these kids who were born after, or were too young that day to really know and understand what happened. it was a trip to us. because our mindset was, “how can anyone ever forget this or not really know what it was about?”

and do yourself a favor and don’t politicize it, don’t get bogged down in details. just take a moment and reflect and remember that a whole lot of folks died that day and deserve that respect.

keep the good news comin’ …

so i’ve mentioned this magazine thing i’ve been mentioned in for months. well, it’s official.

Flowers& is a trade magazine that goes out to florists and gift shops around the country. this is for their september issue, in the “new products” section. woohoo!

click on the image if you want to see the whole pdf. i’m No. 5.

and yes, i’m still wicked busy. my shop revamp will hopefully be done friday … *crosses fingers*

i heart college football …

truly the most wonderful time of the year. yeeeah.

on the first saturday …

… usc still kicks ass. only usc can bleed a bunch of heismans and still put a whoopin’ on an SEC team. yeesh. i didn’t get to watch too much of the game because i was at work, but every time i looked up, the score grew. and this no. 83 — fred davis? man, the kid is good. what a tight end. he’s friggin’ huge. and he can catch. dominique byrd? who needs him?

… cal is wickedly overrated. ranked no. 9 but still without a decent quarterback. marshawn lynch’s heisman campaign is kind of bust. and don’t give me the SEC hostile environs excuse. see what usc did? don’t tell me arkansas is not as hostile an environment as tennessee. and the vols were probably just as mediocre as the hogs last year. ’nuff said.

… i still hate notre dame. bastards. i wanted them to fall flat on their faces and it almost happened. but it didn’t. *sigh*

two more weeks and it’s on with nebraska. yeeeah.

other than getting my football fill, things are quite busy. i finally got a pdf of the magazine pages (i was stoked)! i’ll have to share that later. i have 20 billion projects to do. more hats. more bags. more scarves. a complete rebuilding of my rosebud designs shop (with a rebuilding of the design services side later). schoolwork. holy crap.

at least there is a holiday. more time for me to sit in front of the computer and go blind. woo.